"if Miicrosoft kepts up the same pattern" then W8 would have been supported longer than W7 but it wasn't. So it's entirely possible they want to kill off W10 support early W8/8.1 style.

No what I am doing is wishing that "upgraded" water still remains water and not contaminated urine passed of as "non-legacy water" (W11 in a nutshell)... ;-)

10 is OK, but probably my last Windows unless things swing around 180 degrees for Win 12, which I very much doubt at this point. But we'll see if MS keeps up their shit/passable cycle or finally breaks it.

So I'll probably be staying on Win 10 well into 2030s. The label slapped onto the OS is irrelevant to me. Actually, the last time I updated my Win 10 was like 2 years ago as I don't really care, as long as everything works :P

Technically ESU support ends in Jan 2024 on Azure. Unknown if MS will limit ESU updates to just Azure (I doubt it since WSUS doesn't work that way). Even if they did people will download the updates from mscatalog and install unless MS somehow sticks a Azure requirement in the updates.

So you have open source dropping OS support when MS still does support it. Same thing happened with XP. Of course everyone knows open source is largely controlled by those companies anyway so....

For those quoting steam statistics, remember those statistics are optional. I always turn them off.

As for signed executables, don't encourage them. Likely the "solution" would be to wrap the executable in another layer that is signed similar to what Origin does with their executables for their DRM. yay.

The solution for now is to not use browsers for your apps, devs need to stop being lazy. There is nothing preventing devs from seperating the bloated CEF functionality from the game launcher code except their own laziness. This would benefit everyone since I don't know about anyone else but I don't need or want any of that other crap which why I only use the launchers to download the games (in a seperate VM) and on my main game machine I copy the games to it and crack them. Sadly GOG Galaxy is the only one I can't do this for due to it's shitty coding so I have to have GOG Galaxy on my main machine (I store backup copies of GOG repo and GOG galaxy games).

Expecting companies to not break things that are still working isn't outlandish, i don't think it is at least. Steam screwed up by relying on chromium.

By the way, that 1.4% of the users? Yeah, that's about 2.4 million active accounts.

In the end it doesn't really make a difference if one trusts his new OS or not. The old ones are not supported, end of story. So either go with the flow or post in countless threads how bad it is that outdated systems are not supported anymore.

MS is trying to get back a certain degree of control over their sytem. They won't go to far however, too many professional customers who fill their purses rely on a certain level of freedom. If they scare away these, then they are really fucked.

What the hell... I just checked... it is now actually even less than that.
Is there a way to look at past surveys?

Something is not right. I recall just sometime in the last months seeing another survey (could have been regarding hell knows what though) with Win7 having an astonishing >20% usage. That surprised even me. But currently it is less than 1% !?

Edit: Nevermind. I found the survey. I was mistaken. It was not 21%, but 12%... (See attached image)

Offline GOG installers can even be launched on Win98, no? (for old 90s games at least)

GOG Galaxy 1.2.67 exists and you can install that if you want playtime and achievements.

I'm not surprised. Microsoft has trained the average user to just accept forced obsolescence, they know that most people will just fall in line and buy their newest, even-more-bloated spyware OS because they have such a monopoly and that having convictions, patience, and actually taking a stand against anti-consumer products requires real effort. It's so much easier and more convenient to just comply.

Steam are basically telling me that if I don't jump through their hoops, I will lose access to the 535 games I own there. A clear demonstration that I DON'T ACTUALLY OWN the games I have on Steam.

Fortunately, I've already bought a lot of these games on GoG. And after the news, I started buying the ones I don't have on GoG.

It will be nice for people like me (and we are currently 1 800 000 people despite EVERYTHING that has been done to force us to abandon Win7 - which is comparable to the population of Estonia, or Latvia, or Slovenia, or Cyprus) to be able to buy the rest of these games in an easy way, so that for any game I have on Steam I see the corresponding game that I don't have on GoG but is available there.

To avoid any confusion, I don't expect GoG to "gift" me the games I was stupid enough to buy elsewhere. No, this is a request that allows me easy comparison and purchase. I hope this feature may be useful to advertise GoG as a place where you really OWN / CAN DOWNLOAD your games rather than just having access to them until someone randomly decides something.

I wrote a feature request here. You can vote for it if you like it.
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/in_light_of_recent_news_actionable_comparison_between_steam_gog_library

MS Launched Windows 7 in 2009, I wish my three Microwaves obsolescence had been the same over the years.

Why go through all this trouble to stay on an older OS, potentially risking security and compatibility over all?

I find it kind of ironic when people claim to want DRM free, not to be tied to anything etc. While at the same time intentionally tying themselves to Microsoft and their operating systems, potentially even an old no longer maintained version.

Why do that to yourself? It's a bit like self harming. You don't want to be tied to Steam, so why be tied to Microsoft? Why force yourself to be tied to any business?

I understand you may want to run older games, that don't work on Windows 10 or above. That's fine, I get that. But the thing is almost all of those games now will work better under Linux than they do on Windows. (For example, if it's a DirectX 9 game, on Linux it'll run using Vulkan, so you may actually get better performance.)

It's simply no longer necessary to stay on Windows, not like how it used to be. Really, it can give you the best of both worlds: An up to date operating system that can play older games without a ton of workarounds + An up to date operating system that can play new games and software without a ton of workarounds.

It's dead easy to install and set up these days (honestly, a toddler could do it) and if you're worried about it breaking use one of the immutable versions, because if they break you have the option to just reboot to the previous image and it's fixed, regardless of what broke it in the first place.

And for those that want privacy, again. Bonus, it doesn't have all that telemetry junk and spyware that comes with Windows.

What's not to love? Being loyal to an out of date, corporation owned operating system is effectively giving yourself "DRM" in the sense of "I will only use this with X, and I will not permit my self to use any other companies product!" in my view.

It's just silly.

Just my 2c.

(Yeah, I know, you're all angry now. But that's just how I see it.)

I've not done it myself, but I believe your windows 10 key will transfer over to 11 as an 'upgrade', but holy shit, as much as I despise Windows 10, W11 is orders of magnitude worse, for a whole myriad of reasons. It'd take me all day to cover just the counter-intuitive, time wasting UI design decisions I've encountered, let alone everything else wrong with it.

If I am not wrong you can upgrade to Win 11 for free if your computer meets the requirements. Simlar requirements to Win 10 or Win 7. The only difference is that it requires TPM 2.0..

sweating in windows vista